1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to lifting devices for use with a crane; and, more particularly, the present invention relates to a lifting device for beehives.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Honey is a nutritious food and is preferred by many as sweetener. In addition, pollination by bees is important to successful production of fruit and some other foods.
In beekeeping, a beehive includes a lower box-type structure that provides a brood chamber for the bees, and a plurality of additional box-type structures, or supers, that are stacked onto the brood chamber. Honey is taken from the supers for human consumption; but the honey in the brood chamber is left to provide food for the bees during seasons when nectar is not available to them.
Some beekeepers provide pollination for fruit growers over a rather wide geographical area. To provide this pollination service means that beehives, each complete with a swarm of bees, and perhaps partially filled with honey, must be lifted onto a truck to be transported to the fields that are to be pollinated.
Further, even when a beekeeper does not provide a pollination service for others, the keeping of bees requires lifting supers that are filled with honey.
Barnes, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,392,679, discloses a device for clamping the various sections of beehives together and then transporting the beehives manually by a pole that is carried on the shoulders of two men.
Kruse, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,678,744, discloses a two wheel dolly for handling beehives. A manually actuated hoist is included for lifting individual sections or several sections of the beehives from the brood chamber.
It is apparent that neither Barnes nor Kruse provides a suitable method of handling beehives where loading of beehives on trucks is involved. Further, it is apparent that neither device is adaptable to the mechanization that is required to reduce the labor content in beekeeping.
Kugler, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,427,066, discloses a lifting device which includes lifting lugs than engage handhold slots in fruit packing boxes. While the fruit box lifting device of Kugler is superficially similar to the beehive lifting device of the present invention, it lacks many of the important features of the present invention, as will be obvious from the detailed description of the present invention.